Baba Yaga
Baba Yaga is a fictional character in the Wild Cards series of books. History Mariamna Solovyova had a career in the KGB along with the ace Tolenka, otherwise known then as Hellraiser. The pair of Soviet agents operated together both as partners and as lovers for a time until a botched mission saw Tolenka somehow inhabited by an otherworldly presence that sought to use him to cross over and bring its own Hell to Earth. Tolenka fought back against this evil and contained it while his lover took care of him while his body gradually succumbed to its parasitic tormentor, both of them coming to an understanding that is he died then the evil would no longer have a barrier and emerge fully upon Earth. Baba Yaga, having learned from Tolenka's cassette tape records how to hold the beast in check, developed an illegal fighting ring attached to a casino in Talas, Kazakhstan. Occasionally a combatant would have to die in the ring to sate the beast within Tolenka: too little death in Tolenka's presence and the evil would awaken, too much and the evil would awaken. Baba Yaga refined the formula for years. Eventually the need the need to maintain a steady supply of fighters saw her draw upon numerous jokers from Jokertown. Disappearing jokers caught the attention of Detective Francis Black of the Jokertown precinct Fort Freak and Agent Jamal Norwood of SCARE, who teamed up to rid the world of Baba Yaga's joker fight club and bring the kidnapped jokers home to New York. The chaos resulting from their raid in Talas caused numerous fatalities, with both Black and Baba Yaga injured and taken to hospital while Norwood wound up among the dead. The bloodshed was enough to awaken the beast that Baba Yaga had concealed for so long and she took the option of escaping while it began to corrupt the city, having her thugs bring Detective Black along on her flight. The pair made their way to Tehran before escaping to New York, but not without incident. They encountered Black Tongue, one of the former fighters from the club, on the way and his poison laced tongue struck her left hand, forcing Black to arrange an amputation in order to save her life. Once they were in New York, Baba Yaga gave up the information she knew about Tolenka and the evil now perverting the landscape of Kazakhstan, enough for others to work from to put an end to the spreading carnage. With the threat ended Baba Yaga packed and left for Paris, but Black hadn't quite finished with her. He located her in an expensive hotel and hatched a plan to get close enough to inject her with a dose of the Black Trump virus. Baba Yaga's wild card reactivated and began transforming her into a joker with hard stegosaurus dorsal plates protruding from her back. Wild Cards Traits Baba Yaga is an ace with the power to twist and contort human flesh into pieces of furniture resembling chairs. The power is conveyed through her saliva, allowing her to apply it as a short range attack, although once she has spat it takes time for her to work up enough empowered saliva to deliver a subsequent attack. A victim struck by Baba Yaga's saliva is then wracked by incredible pain as their bones break and their flesh is forced into a whole new shape. The resulting furniture-like form of the warped individual remains alive for some time, apparently remaining conscious and seeing through eyes without a face, and is comprised of a substance that appears to be neither flesh, nor wood, nor metal, but something in between. Appearance Baba Yaga is a small elderly woman with red dyed hair and piercing grey eyes. She reports having been quite attractive in her youth. She has been subsequently mutated after receiving a dose of the Black Trump virus, which left her with bony growths on her back. Selected Reading * *